1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication transmitting apparatus having an autonomous distributed controlling unit autonomously controls a network including an input communication transmitting apparatus and an output communication transmitting apparatus opposed through the own apparatus based on control information of a network made up of communication transmitting apparatuses disposed in a distributed manner, and a communication transmitting method in the communication transmitting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In optical communicating apparatuses such as routers in optical communication networks, a technology called GMPLS (Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching) is known that determines transfer routes based on wavelengths of optical signals to transfer optical signals as optical signals without change. Since optical signals are transferred without conversion into electric signals in GMPLS, optical signals may be transferred at higher speed without overhead of signal conversion and the high-speed nature of optical communication does not deteriorate.
Operation of GMPLS requires information indeterminable independently with the own apparatus in addition to the internal information (such as own apparatus ID and interface ID) managed by optical communication transferring apparatuses. Specifically, operation of GMPLS requires IP addresses and apparatus IDs of adjacent apparatuses that are counterparts of transmission/reception of control messages (IP (Internet Protocol) packets), apparatus IDs and interface IDs of opposed apparatuses connected through optical fibers in an optical communication network, etc. These pieces of information will hereinafter be referred to as necessary information.
The IP addresses and the apparatus IDs of the adjacent apparatuses are used when exchanging protocol messages of the signaling protocol (GMPLS RSVP-TE) or the routing protocol (GMPLS OSPF-TE) or used for the process thereof. The apparatus IDs and the interface IDs of the opposed apparatuses are used to establish fiber topology information managed by optical communicating apparatuses indicating connection relationship between the optical communication apparatuses.
Methods of acquiring the necessary information include a method of utilizing LMP (Link Management Protocol, RFC4204) that is a protocol of exchanging and acquiring the necessary information between apparatuses at the time of activation of the apparatuses. A plurality of GMPLS functions for operating GMPLS provided on the optical communication apparatuses acquire respective pieces of the necessary information through LMP. To avoid waste that the GMPLS functions redundantly acquire the necessary information, a communication controlling apparatus is proposed that acquires the necessary information through a single interface for shared management (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-320390).
However, although conventional technologies represented by Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-320390 enable efficient management of the necessary information by eliminating redundant acquisition of the necessary information and sharing the acquired among the GMPLS functions, a so-called GMPLS scalability problem is not solved.
Specifically, the GMPLS scalability problem is as follows. An optical communication network must have a full-mesh configuration when only GMPLS is used. Therefore, if the optical communication network is connected to an external IP network, it is problematic that a path setting ability deteriorates since the enormous number of paths is generated in the entire network.
If it is attempted to ensure the reachability of optical signals among optical communicating apparatuses storing users only through optical fibers, an optical communication network must be configured in a full-mesh shape and it is problematic that a usage rate of an actually used band extremely decreases relative to a total band in this case.
Therefore, since the number of paths becomes enormous as above if optical communicating apparatuses set a route for each destination optical communicating apparatus, a route must be selected from enormous candidates and, therefore, it is problematic that the optical signal transfer ability may deteriorate in the optical communicating apparatuses.